Writing 1st person POV

[birdsofshore]

I love to write in 1st person. I think I am a little bit hooked on it, tbh. I have been writing 1st person Draco for ages, but last year I wrote a lot of alternating 1st person, and really enjoyed that, too, and then this year I felt compelled to write 1st person Harry. With debatable results, BUT, I still very much enjoyed writing it, and wouldn't rule out doing it again.

My dracotops_harry fic was quite a long 1st person Draco POV, and I noticed a real trend in the comments to talk about the fact that people had liked it despite it being 1st person. This came up again and again, as if it was a complete rarity to enjoy a 1st person fic. Someone also left a bookmark which really made me laugh:

Usually first-persons are stinkers, but this wasn't.

WOW THANKS :D

Anyway, I mentioned to Mr Birds that apparently people felt mistrustful of 1st person, and he was surprised as well. We googled for a list of novels that were written in 1st person, and what do you know, a ton of my favourite books are 1st person. Catcher in the Rye, Jane Eyre, Lolita, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, To Kill a Mockingbird, Breakfast at Tiffany's, A Clockwork Orange, The Perks of Being a Wallflower are all 1st person narratives. As a reader I find it a stunningly immersive experience, and if the narrator is unreliable or twisted or damaged then I enjoy it even more.

As a fanfic writer, obviously I'm not aiming for anything approaching those novels, but I find writing 1st person an easy way to make a connection, first with the character I'm writing, and then with the reader. I find writing other POVs distances me and the reader from the story that I'm telling. Maybe it's become a lazy habit and I should attempt to get that immediacy by other means, using 3rd person? I don't know. But I feel conflicted - I want to go on writing 1st person whenever it seems appropriate, but readers are telling me that they actively avoid 1st person fics.

Do people mistrust / dislike 1st person in original fic, or just in fanfic? Do you agree that 1st person fics are usually "stinkers"? If so, why? Do you enjoy reading 1st person? In fic? In original novels? Do you write it? Do you avoid it? I have all of the questions and none of the answers!

Comments

[sdkshelly.livejournal.com]

I'm totally one of those people who tends to avoid 1st person fic. But for me, it's just in fanfic. I have no particular preferences when it comes to orig fiction. And it's mostly just with characters that I'm close to--either ones that I write a lot or have strong feelings about, etc. And it isn't about 1st person per se--not particularly liking that style. It's more about voice-agreement. If the character is one I have strong preferences about (like Harry or Draco) and the author's 1st person's voice for that character doesn't agree with my own preferences, it's jarring for me. I'm not saying that my preferences are right or canon or whathaveyou and the author's are wrong--not by ANY means. It's just a quirk. It's just much easier to handwave things in 3rd person rather than 1st. I'm sure I miss out on some excellent fic because I'm weird.

Also, I'll add on, in smutty scenes, it's easier to get squicked in first person, for me. And squicked might be too strong a word, but there can be little things in sex scenes that I don't particularly enjoy -- nothing huge -- and usually I can just skim or handwave those little bits, but it's so much harder to do that in first person because there's less distance between the reader and the POV character.

I don't know if this is making sense! I hope so! But yeah, it's nothing to do with 1st person being generally horrible for me! LOL! It's more that I'm picky about things and it's a lot easier to ignore little things that I don't like in 3rd person rather than 1st. I guess that's the main thing. But as a writer, I have written in both 1st and 2nd POV because that's the way the story came out and wanted to be written. And I certainly wouldn't want people to stop writing how they want to write just because I'm so picky and weird!

[birdsofshore]

It really makes a lot of sense and I can identify with everything you're saying. I see why it wouldn't be the case with original fic. I hadn't thought about sex scenes like that, either. I find I tend to get more 'this was hot' comments when I write 1st person, but it stands to reason that if you increase the intensity of the smut, you're also going to increase the squick value of anything the reader doesn't like. It's a real gamble and I can understand why you don't read 1st person in that situation. I don't think you're picky or weird!